Microsoft has released a beta SDK for Windows, allowing Windows developers to officially make use of the XBox Kinect hardware. From their own press release: "The Kinect for Windows SDK, which works with Windows 7, includes drivers, rich APIs for Raw Sensor Streams, natural user interfaces, installer documents and resource materials. The SDK provides Kinect capabilities to developers building applications with C++, C# or Visual Basic using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010."

I wonder if this would have happened if drivers weren't hacked up to make it work with Linux. MS can't have liked all those Linux YouTube Kinect videos..... Those drivers are in the kernel mainline now. Be interesting how the OpenKinect SDK compares with the MS one. Personally, I'd much rather use Python+C or C++ then C# (and no C++/CLI isn't really C++).